Eric Rasmusen's Weblog

I take a conservative, evangelical, economistical look at things. I will be posting intermittently, for reference rather than daily reading.
My Wordpress site from before 30 September 2007 is at http://rasmusen.org/x. It is searched from the search engine below(not above).

Friday, November 30, 2007

Immigrants and Crime: Switzerland.The Independent had an article a while back on discontent with immigration in Switzerland. Here are a couple of interesting facts from it:

* More than 20 per cent of the Swiss population, and 25 per cent of its workforce, is non-naturalised.

* At the end of 2006, 5,888 people were interned in Swiss prisons. 31 per cent were Swiss citizens – 69 per cent were foreigners or asylum-seekers.

I wish it said how many of those "interned" were there for immigration crimes. None of them, or most of them?

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Race-Realists and Group Identification.John Derbyshire has interesting things to say on the sociology of willingness to think about racial differences:

If you hang out with race-realist types a lot — and yes, I do, and count myself one — a thing you notice is that a high proportion of them, of us, are antisocial loners. Trust me, it’s not just because of their opinions that race realists don’t win any popularity prizes. ...

Like every other feature of human nature, the groupish emotions are unevenly distributed. Some individuals are richly endowed with them. They are plunged into despair when their baseball team loses; they bristle to hear their religion criticized; they are furious at insults to their nation; if of eccentric sexual preference, they may swear brotherhood with those similarly disposed; and yes, they are mad as hell to hear their race described as failed, even though they understand at some level that it’s an abstract statistical description that does not reflect on them personally, any more than their baseball team’s losing the World Series does.

Your antisocial loner isn’t like that. He probably has no strong opinion about the relative merits of Yankees and Mets. If he goes to church, it’s for personal and metaphysical reasons, not social ones. He’s a poor employee and a feeble team-sports participant. He may like his country, and be willing to fight for it, but exuberant expressions of patriotism embarrass him. He’s more likely than the average to marry someone of a different race. (Am I describing anyone in particular here? No! Absolutely not!) Tell him he belongs to a failed race and he’ll probably say: “Yes, I guess so. It’s sad. But hey, I’m doing okay...”...

If you are not that type — and most people, even most Americans, are not — it’s much more difficult for you to discuss human-group differences. Too much groupish emotion gets in the way. ...

... people strongly susceptible to group identification do better in the world — are more successful. It’s a social world, success-wise, and they’re social people. What is social success, but identifying with groups and securing high status within them? Having a set of good robust groupish emotions will do that for ya. Thus, race realists don’t get much of a hearing; and when they pipe up, their views sound strange and eccentric. They heat up the groupish emotions of the majority — of most normal human beings — and shouting breaks out.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

...1950's liberalism was based on southern white racism and solid support from the unions, neither of which exists any more. There is no future in pure redistributional policies in the USA for this reason. Indeed, if one looks at other social democratic countries, almost all are moving from corporate liberalism to embrace new options, such as Sarkozy in France (French socialists have the same pathetic political sense as American liberals, and will share the same fate).
I am sorry that we can't do better than Krugman. There are very serious social problems to be addressed, but the poor, pathetic, liberals simply haven't a clue. Conservatives, on the other, are political sophisticated and hold clear visions of what they want. It is too bad that what they want does not include caring about the poor and the otherwise afflicted, or dealing with our natural environment. Politics in the USA is no longer Elephants and Donkeys; it is now conservative Pigs and liberal Bonobos. The pigs are smart but only care about what's in their trough. The Bonobos are polymorphous perverse and great lovers, but will be extinct in short order.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Downward Sloping Demand Curves for Stocks. Marzena Rostek presented "Frequent Trading and Price Impact in Thin Markets," (with Marek Weretka)today at Nuffield. It's a simple approach to downward-sloping demands for assets. Suppose there are a number of traders with CARA utility functions and stock returns are normal, so the traders care only about mean and variance. Each trader holds some portfolio of stocks. He would like to diversify, but if he puts some of his stock on the market, he has market power and will push down the price, since other people will have to be paid to hold more of that kind of risk. As a result, he will hold back some of the stock rather than diversify fully. Also, in way I do not fully understand this can explain splitting a trade up across periods. It is not for informational reasons-- there is full information in this model-- but because if I try to trade more of my stock in a period, I will drive down the price, keeping other people's quantity offered constant.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Democracy: Elections and Referenda. At my workshop today at the business school, the issue came up of whether people's votes express their preferences or whether they are too easily misled. Can we decide the intensity of feeling over abortion by seeing which candidate wins an election? A referendum would not work as well, since it is a vote on a single issue, so there is no opportunity for tradeoff. Everyone who voted would vote their preference, intense or mild, and the only opportunities for intense preferences to count for more would be in turnout and in spending on advertising to convince those with mild preferences. Interestingly enough, in such a case the presence of many almost indifferent voters could be very helpful in making the vote display intensity too. Someone who is almost indifferent is up for grabs, and so the intensity of other voters can obtain a double vote where it could not if the voter had somewhat stronger views. The danger from a tyranny of the majority is greatest not when there is a large number of voters with weak views, but where there are few such people, but many whose views are just strong to induce them to vote on their own initiative and to be immune to persuasion by the efforts of those with intense feelings.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Pascal's Wager and Diversification of Risk.Marginal Revolution reports on a Justin Wolfers' variant on Pascal's Wager: If you have five children, train each to be a disciple of a different religion. That way, at least someone in the family will get into Heaven.

This is an argument worth thinking about. It is not an argument about yourself, but about helping your children. Here, perhaps, is the fallacy. If I am selfish, I care about my own salvation, which this project will surely doom. If I care about my children, I should choose the best estimated outcome for each of them-- which is the religion which best meets the conditions of Pascal's Wager (a high up-side gain and a low down-side cost). The Wolfers project makes sense only in a mixed case where my utility is concave in my children's utility. That's not unrealistic, but it's what we think of as our duty towards the children either-- and remember, if we're thinking about realism, my own salvation is going to weigh very heavily.

Of course, Pascal said that he didn't think his Wager was sound, since only God can give saving faith-- cold-blooded calculation won't make you love God. But the Wager does work as a way to avoid punishment for sin, if not for adoption into God's family.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Personal Autonomy. I've been reading Feinberg on the idea that personal autonomy is a good thing. This is a central idea of modern liberalism. Self-fulfillment and self-definition become the central goods. A person should seek not achievement or happiness, but the fulfillment of his talents. I find this hard to understand. Suppose someone has very little talent of any kind. Is he to forfeit happiness in order to pursue what he is best at, or what he fancies he is best at but knows that "best" is not very good? Or suppose someone does have great talents. Must he give up happiness, or achievement, in order to pursue self-fulfillment?

Another component to autonomy is the rational choice of one's moral principles, in the name of "authenticity". This seems to me to have authenticity backwards. Which is more authentic, the person who picks and chooses to construct a hodge-podge of moral principles that fails to hang together but is individual and self-chosen, or the person who is true to the morality of his culture? Which is more authentic, the modern American mish-mash, or the Amazonian savage who sticks to the beliefs of 1000 years of his culture? And which is more stable? Someone who tries to create himself is less likely to stick with it precisely because he is always self-creating and because he never is bound to what he has chosen. Almost by definition, he changes more easily, and of course he will give in more easily to temptation, since his habits are less established.

When a person is thankful, he is of course has to thanking someone---"to thank" is a transitive verb, requiring an object. Thanksgiving is a time to thank God, as the government proclamations traditionally say. These proclamations make nonsense of the claim that the American Constitution forbids a place for Christianity in public affairs, though it is noteworthy that Thomas Jefferson, unlike his two predecessors, refrained from issuing any Thanksgiving Proclamations. The 2006 Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation is here. (Click here to read more.)

Below are excerpts from some Thanksgiving proclamations from across American history.

The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God's Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and soulds as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ. (1676, Connecticut)

Before going on to other proclamations, let's look at some history. Karen Knelte writes

Most of us have been taught since childhood that Thanksgiving originated in 1621 when the Pilgrim survivors of the first winter, the following autumn had their first good harvest and celebrated for 3 days with their Indian friends who had taught them much about how to survive in this new land. This event did happen and is described by Edward Winslow, in a letter dated December 11, 1621. However, the later Thanksgivings are not commemorations of this event, as we will see. Here is an excerpt from the letter:

Our corn did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown, they came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom; our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

Edward Winslow, December 11, 1621, in: [Mourt’s Relation] A Relation or Journall of the beginning and proceeding of the English Plantation settled at Plimoth in New England, by certaine English Adventurers both Merchants and others. London, Printed for John Bellamie, 1622. p.60-61.

Back to proclamations:

"Forasmuch as it is the indispensable Duty of all Men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for benefits received, and to implore such further Blessings as they stand in Need of: ...(1777, Continental Congress)

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requefted me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to eftablifh a form of government for their safety and happiness:... (1789, Washington)

Deeply penetrated with this sentiment, I, George Washington, President of the United States, do recommend to all religious societies and denominations, and to all persons whomsoever, within the United States to set apart and observe Thursday, the 19th day of February next as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, and on that day to meet together and render their sincere and hearty thanks to the Great Ruler of Nations for the manifold and signal mercies which distinguish our lot as a nation,... (1795, Washington)

As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him, but a duty whose natural influence is favorable to the promotion of that morality and piety without which social happiness can not exist nor the blessings of a free government be enjoyed; and as this duty, at all times incumbent, is so especially in seasons of difficulty or of danger, when existing or threatening calamities, the just judgments of God against prevalent iniquity, are a loud call to repentance and reformation;... (1798, Adams)

As no truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration , nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of the governing providence of a Supreme Being and of the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributer of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the happiness and rectitude of individuals and to the well-being of communities;.. (1799, Adams)

I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union. (Lincoln, 1863)

Let us now, this Thanksgiving Day, reawaken ourselves and our neighbors and our communities to the genius of our founders in daring to build the world's first constitutional democracy on the foundation of trust and thanks to God. Out of our right and proper rejoicing on Thanksgiving Day, let us give our own thanks to God and reaffirm our love of family, neighbor, and community. (1996, Clinton)

Each year on Thanksgiving, we gather with family and friends to thank God for the many blessings He has given us, and we ask God to continue to guide and watch over our country. (2003, Bush)

In 1777, the Continental Congress declared the first national American Thanksgiving following the providential victory at Saratoga. The 1777 Thanksgiving proclamation reveals its New England Puritan roots. The day was still officially a religious observance in recognition of God's Providence, and, as on the Sabbath, both work and amusements were forbidden. It does not resemble our idea of a Thanksgiving, with its emphasis on family dinners and popular recreation. Yet beneath these stern sentiments, the old Puritan fervor had declined to the extent that Thanksgiving was beginning to be less of a religious and more of a secular celebration. The focus was shifting from the religious service to the family gathering. Communities still dutifully went to church each Thanksgiving Day but the social and culinary attractions were increasing in importance....

National Thanksgivings were proclaimed annually by Congress from 1777 to 1783 which, except for 1782, were all celebrated in December. After a five year hiatus, the practice was revived by President Washington in 1789 and 1795. John Adams declared Thanksgivings in 1798 and 1799, while James Madison declared the holiday twice in 1815; none of these were celebrated in the autumn. After 1815, there were no further national Thanksgivings until the Civil War. ... The New England states continued to declare annual Thanksgivings (usually in November, although not always on the same day), and eventually most of the other states also had independent observations of the holiday. ...At mid-century even the southern states were celebrating their own Thanksgivings.

By the 1840s when the Puritan holy day had largely given way to the Yankee holiday, Thanksgiving was usually depicted in a family setting with dinner as the central event. The archetypal tradition of harvest celebration had weathered Puritan disapproval and quietly reasserted its influence. Newspapers and magazines helped popularize the holiday in its new guise as a secular autumn celebration featuring feasting, family reunions and charity to the poor. ...

It is interesting that the same person who was a leading figure in the domesticity movement, Sarah Josepha Hale, also labored for decades to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. A New England author and editor of the influential Godey's Ladies Book, Hale lobbied for a return to the morality and simplicity of days gone by. Each November from 1846 until 1863 Mrs. Hale printed an editorial urging the federal government to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. She was finally gratified when Abraham Lincoln declared the first of our modern series of annual Thanksgiving holidays for the last Thursday in November, 1863. Lincoln had previously declared national Thanksgivings for April, 1862, and again for August 6, 1863, after the northern victory at Gettysburg. ...

Lincoln went on to declare a similar Thanksgiving observance in 1864, establishing a precedent that was followed by Andrew Johnson in 1865 and by every subsequent president. ...In 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt departed from tradition by declaring November 23, the next to the last Thursday that year, as Thanksgiving. Considerable controversy (mostly following political lines) arose around this outrage to custom, so that some Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on the 23rd and others on the 30th (including Plymouth, MA). In 1940, the country was once again divided over "Franksgiving" as the Thanksgiving declared for November 21st was called. Thanksgiving was declared for the earlier Thursday again in 1941, but Roosevelt admitted that the earlier date (which had not proven useful to the commercial interests) was a mistake. On November 26, 1941, he signed a bill that established the fourth Thursday in November as the national Thanksgiving holiday, which it has been ever since.

"Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations."

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing;
He chastens andhastens his will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease fromdistressing,
Sing praises to his name: He forgets not his own.
Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining his kingdom devine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, wast at our side, All glory be thine!
We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
And pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy namebe ever praised! O Lord, make us free! Amen

Camden Town [1F, 61] Camden is the only market I spent any amount of time at, but there are many other markets that are worth checking out. Camden is actually home to a whole series of markets, all fairly different. You can easily spend a couple of hours rooting through racks of clothes, jewelry, CDs and assorted bricabrac. There are also permanent shops that sell food, leather goods, shoes and so forth, as well as rather dodgy stalls set up on the sidewalks to sell watches and tapes.

The first market you’ll probably see is Camden Market (Thursday-Sunday, 9 - 5:30). It’s the first market on your right as you walk north from the Camden Town tube along Camden High Street. Camden Market tends to sell mostly clothes; t-shirts, Doc Martens (£35 new!), military peacoats and the like. You can also buy jewelry, makeup and records. If you get hungry, there are some cheap ethnic food stalls whose quality I will not vouch for.

Continuing up Camden High Street you will pass over the Camden Lock, an artificial waterway. Along with the usual t-shirts and jewelry, the Canal Market also offers up some more interesting items: African statues, bootleg concert videos and tapes (but don’t bother buying the videos because you won’t be able to play them in the States. Europe uses a different format, so unless you have a VCR in your flat, they will be useless), Swiss army knives, blankets, and more. Sometimes there are collector’s items like stamps or comic books as well.

Across the street from the Canal Market is Camden Lock Market. It sprawls around the market hall, a multi-story shopping center. The items you’ll find here are similar to those in other markets: mood rings, official Guinness pint glasses, bootleg concert CDs, used books, cheesy souveniers, and all the rest. The permanent shops are interesting, though. They include a Turkish Bath shop, a palm reader, and a nice glass shop, and they are open seven days a week, unlike the stalls that only spring up on weekends.

If you continue north through the Lock Market you will quickly find yourself in a warren of brick alleyways. This is the Stables Market, which bills itself as London’s biggest antique market. Whether it is or not, it’s still massive, and there is plenty to be found there. There are antiques by the bucketloads, of course: spoons, clocks, and coins dominate. There are also clothing and army surplus stalls, record shops, vintage book stores, and a metalwork stand.

There’s also plenty of food in the Stables, as well. You can try the Oasis Food Arch, which gathers six international food stands into one area by the south entrance. There are also carts that sell packets of roasted coconut and peanuts (£1) and a stand that sells burgers (£2 for veggie or meat versions).

Camden is a fairly touristy area, with lots of foreign students as well. All of the markets are crowded. Camden Market in particular can get packed, with barely any room to squeeze past. In short, it’s a pickpocket’s heaven, so play it smart: keep your wallet in a front pocket, and securely close any bags.

Camden Town is a wonderful place for bargain hunters to shop. Initially, the prices are high, but with a little persuasion from the buyer, these vendors will gladly lower their prices immediately. Open Thursday to Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., this market is just right for anyone who enjoys a crowded, but relaxing, scene for shopping. Even if you aren’t a shopper, or if your budget does not include buying clothes in London, go for the cultural experience. The people are friendly and interesting.

I discovered that there are at least eleven book markets operating on a regular (at least once a week) basis. I chose to visit three of the best-known markets: Southbank, Portobello Road and Camdem Road.

Southbank Book Market is a “romantic” outdoor market devoted almost exclusively to books, open every day 11am- 7pm under the Waterloo Bridge and continuing along the Thames in a wide pedestrian open space. This is where Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts fell in love in “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” but the day I visited it reminiscent only of the funeral. The morose damp weather had kept all but one vendor away, and it was rather sad to see his displayed books amidst a sea of locked wooden storage trunks. It was too depressing to even browse.

I walked across the Waterloo footbridge to Embankment tube station and headed off to Notting Hill and the famous Portobello Market. This Saturday market is mostly indoors, with scattered bookstalls accessible through gallery entrances off the Portobello Road and Westbourne Grove and down cluttered alleyways, like interconnecting rabbit warrens. Luckily I had my Book Lovers’ London guide to indicate where the booksellers were hiding.

Many of the stalls are specialized in specific types of books, from history to rugby to fine and applied arts, or just first edition novels. Most have a selection of leatherbound volumes that are sometimes purchased for their decorative value without concern for the content. The overall presentation is quite varied, ranging from dishevelled chaos to a system that would make Dewey proud. I made a few small purchases, travel books from the early 20th century.

From Portobello I took the tube Circle line, changed at King’s Cross, and took the Northern Line to Camden Market (open Saturdays and Sundays). Again, the book market stalls were hidden in the myriad of corridors offering New Age / Punk / Afro-exotic apparel and accessories. I was lucky to have my handy guidebook indicating the target locations. Times had changed, however, and some establishments mentioned in the guide had closed down, leaving only Black Gull and Walden Books surviving. Both were excellent finds, however, with a huge selection of multi-disciplinary used books and very knowledgeable and friendly management. I bought three books, including a great find on wine walks in France.

I spent the next day at the heart of the used and specialist bookshop district, along Charing Cross road from the National Gallery to Oxford Street. Some are located along quaint pedestrian streets like Cecil Court –a book lover’s heaven- and nearby art specialist stores off of Picadilly. There are stores so filled with stock that step ladders are provided so customers can reach the upper shelves. Typically bargain tables are placed outside. Some have rare volumes locked behind glass fronted cabinets. All shops I visited had very helpful staff who usually knew if Mark Twain’s Travels in Europe was in stock - though if you are just browsing, they will leave you on your own.

I picked up a poster and some postcards at a shop specializing in films and performing arts, and some out-of-print fiction on Cecil Court. And then I found some more travel books which I couldn’t resist.

Finally, I looked at the large number of book fairs held in London during the year, allowing booksellers who may simply have a mail order service from their homes across England to have a stall at these fairs. For example, monthly book fairs are held at the Hotel Russell in Russell Square that are free and very popular. And there are frequent annual events, like the Chelsea Book Fair in June, Performing Arts Book Fairs in April and October, the Travel and Exploration Book Fair in March and the Antiquarian Book Fair in June that attract hundreds of booksellers. Truly a book lovers paradise, a trip to London offers so much more than the mainstream chain store giants.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Subprime Mortgages."The Rise and Fall of Subprime Mortgages"
by Danielle DiMartino and John Duca is a good Dallas Fed discussion of the subprime mortgage crash. They explain it as the result of overly bold financial innovation. People didn't realize how liable to default subprime mortgages were, which meant that the innovation used to securitize them was unreliable. What as done was to divide a package of mortgages into tranches, bundles with different amounts of the risk allocated to them, where the packaging was supposed to put almost all the default risk into the lowest tranches so the upper ones could be AA quality. The problem is that if the amount of default is higher than the entire value of the lower tranches, default creeps into the upper ones.

They also have a good explanation for overconfidence:

Subprime loan problems had surfaced just before and at the start of the 2001 recession but then rapidly retreated from 2002 to 2005 as the economy recovered (Chart 3). This pre-2006 pattern suggested that as long as unemployment remained low, so, too, would default and delinquency rates.

This interpretation ignored two other factors that had helped alleviate subprime loan problems earlier in the decade. First, this was a period of rapidly escalating home prices. Subprime borrowers who encountered financial problems could either borrow against their equity to make house payments or sell their homes to settle their debts. Second, interest rates declined significantly in the early 2000s. This helped lower the base rate to which adjustable mortgage rates were indexed, thereby limiting the increase when initial, teaser rates ended.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Making Big Choices under Uncertainty. I had a good talk about Christianity today during my visit to Warwick University. We talked about two fallacies of delayed decision. One is that of Buridan's Ass, who, halfway between two equally good mangers of hay, died of starvation because there was no way to choose between them. Lesson: To not choose is a choice in itself, and sometimes worse than not choosing the best alternative. The second fallacy is that of my webpost a few days ago: of choosing X because it is very uncertain which is better, X or Y. This seems silly until I bring in the application: choosing not to pray to God because it is very uncertain which is better, praying to God or (because he might not exist) not praying. It is quite possible to make your choice and pray heartily to a God you are not sure exists, just as you can write letters to someone who might never receive them or spend thousands of dollars on a medical treatment that might have no chance ofworking. You may not be able to fix the degree of your belief, and without a strong belief you may find the discipline of following it hard, but you can make the decision.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Perceived or True Value? A fundamental problem that bothers me no end is whether a person is made worse off by discovering an unpleasant truth. I own what I think is a painting by Vermeer. If you tell me that it is not, am I worse off, or better off? (Click here to read more.)

On the one hand, I never really did have a Vermeer, and now at least I am not fooled. On the other hand, before I was happier in my misperception.

To be sure, in a world in which I am always told the truth, I have the advantage that if my Vermeer is genuine, I know that for sure too. But psychologically we have a convenient ability to ignore small probabilities such as the probability a painting is a forgery, so the uncertainty wouldn't really bother me much.

I think I must conclude that the real reason the forgery should be revealed is not for my sake, but to deter future forgery and to help the owners of real Vermeers.

The same would apply to some similar conundrums such as whether a man should be told that his wife has been unfaithful to him. He will be worse off, but if such affairs come to light, they are less likely to happen in the first place.

A somewhat different question is whether a man who is going to die in six months should be told immediately or not. Let us suppose he has no preparations to make, so the information has no direct use. Then it seems he should not be told. But my premise is faulty. I think there are always things a man would do differently if he knew he faced death.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Ocean Grove: A Methodist Town. Ocean Grove, New Jersey, was founded as a town run by Methodist church rules. The WSJ reports on how it went into decline and had its governmental powers transferred to the Township as being too religious a place. This is a good example of how a minority could formerly set up a jurisdiction with is own rules but how modern liberal government is intolerant of traditional morality and forbids anyone to try to enforce it. The WSJ article is about a current dispute over a homosexual union being celebrated on church property

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Tynant water. This bottle of bottled water is beautiful. The photo doesn't do it justice, alas, so the best it can do is jog my own memory. In this rich world, we are surrounded with beautiful things, too many to appreciate. But that is true of the poor world too, isn't it, with all of God's creation out there? Who takes the time to appreciate a leaf?

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning, that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and ’tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain’d with difficulty.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Argos Catalog Store. Argos has an interesting sort of retailing outlet. You go in and look at a big catalog, or shop on the web first. Then you can give the number of your items at a counter and pay, or do that on a terminal (or do that part at home too). You wait. Eventually, your number is called and you go to a different counter and pick up your goods. You can reject them and get your money back if you don't like them upon seeing them.

Monday, November 12, 2007

The Value of Voting. It really is not a mystery why people vote, after all. Given the importance of who wins, even a tiny probability of being decisive is enough, if the voter is altruistic. (Click here to read more.)

I came across "Estimating the Probability of Events That Have Never Occurred: When Is Your Vote Decisive?" by Andrew GELMANG, Gary KING, and W. John BOSCARDIN, Journal of the American Statistical Association, March 1998, Vol. 93, No. 441,p. 1. Professor King of Harvard certainly does interesting work. On page 5 it says:

... the 1952-1988 elections. For six of the elections, the probability is fairly independent of state size (slightly higher for the smallest states) and is near 1 in 10 million. For the other three elections (1964, 1972, and 1984, corresponding to the landslide victories of Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan), the probability is much smaller, on the order of 1 in hundreds of millions for all of the states. This strong dependence of the estimated probability on the size of the victory margin invalidates most of the existing theoretical models.

1 in 10 million is really a huge number, in this context at least (not in most, I guess). If the difference between Bush and Kerry is worth 10 billion dollars, a trivial amount on the international scale, then a vote is worth $1000.

Even in a landslide year, a vote is worth perhaps $2, if $10 billion is at stake. But in those years, people think the amount at stake is bigger too. We can work the calculation out the other way using that thought. Suppose it costs $20 to vote. The marginal voter thought that $200 million was the difference between Clinton and G.H. Bush. He thought perhaps $10 billion was the difference between Goldwater and Johnson. These amounts seem way too small, not too large.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Sin. Pastor Roberts at St. Ebbes spoke on Romans, and how hard it was to keep the Ten Commandments. Bosh. It's easy. The idea of sin should be based on the greatness of God, not on my baseness.(Click here to read more.)

I'm not that bad---by human standards. I *can* keep the Ten Commandments-- or rather, could if I wanted to. The Sabbath commandment is obsolete anyway. On the other hand, can I be holy? No, not by myself. Not even if I tried very hard and became an ascetic in the woods, Father Sergius style (see Tolstoy).

Man is base by comparison with God, and by comparison with God we are all about equally base. It is right for us to love God and to wish we could be holy too. And just as we would try to please a human object of love, so we try to please God, not because we think we will succeed, but because it is fitting to try even so. We want to be worthy of the object of our love, and even if we know we are not and cannot be, we still want to try.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Friday, November 9, 2007

The Jaded Scholar. I was talking with RR today about the problem of how one's research is less exciting 20 years after the PhD than during graduate school, even though one is so much better at it. (Click here to read more.)

The problem is not just middle aged loss of sensibility. We are slowly influenced in what research we do by career concerns, and these are more influential, perhaps, after they are less important to one's career. As students, we pursue what interests us. Then we learn what sells on the academic market, to get publications and grants and jobs. We adapt. But slowly we can get warped away from what is interesting and what made us do research rather than something more lucrative and easier in the first place. Maybe that's all bosh, though--- I don't think it applies to me, whatever problems I may have.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

A Good Graphic. (click to enlarge)

When I was in Taiwan in August, here is how I could gauge how bad the weather might be in Taipei. Notice how much information is conveyed-- not just the expected value of the path, but a confidence interval, and, using color, the intensity of the typhoon.

Spam Blogging Shutdown. For some reason Google's Blogger marked me as a possible "spam blogger" and shut me down for a day or two till I verified that I was a human. I've noticed I'm not getting spam now that I've shifted to Blogger, though I think that's because the spambots have not noticed me yet.

Monday, November 5, 2007

It's Better to Be Recessive than Dominant. Let's suppose you;re a mutation. Congratulations! Whether by cosmic rays, quantum mechanics, or divine intervention, you've come into existence, the hardest part. Now, how about survival? Which would you rather be: neutral junk, recessive beneficial, or dominant beneficial? (We can assume you don't want to to be a fitness-detrcating gene.) (Click here to read more.)

This is the same as junk DNA. It is best to have regressive DNA. That way you can lurk. Being dominant, you'll get wiped out in some era when you're not optimal.

This is related th why having two sexes is useful, perhaps, to keep dispersion of genotypes into a population and thus make it more robust to environmental changes.

But junk DNA and recessives have no defense against mutation. If one of them is mutated, the mutation can survive just as well. A dominant, on the other hand, which is mutated will probably mutate to a harmful form and will immeidately die out, with no chance of taking over by genetic drift.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Divine Anger and the Atonement. I've always thought that the idea that Jesus had to die on the cross to propitate God for Man's sins was a mystery-- something that we had no way of understanding. There is no logical connection between Eric Rasmusen sinning against God and God having to die on the cross so Eric could be forgiven. Why not just forgive Eric outright? There could well be a reason, but we are not told it. (Click here to read more.)

It is not enough to say that every wrong requires a punishment. I don't accept that as an axiom.

On the other hand, it is true that humans feel innately that every wrong requires a punishment. That feeling is part of human nature. It is closely related to reciprocity. It is a useful feeling for humans to have, even if it can't be justified on more fundamental grounds, just as a taste for sweet things is a useful feeling for humans in pre- industrial societies.

My new thought of today is this. Maybe the Atonement is for our sake in adifferent way than we usually think. Suppose it was unnecessary for Jesus to die in order for our sins to be forgiven, and God simply forgave some people's sins. We humans would be left with a feeling that the sins and the forgiveness were not serious-- it is too easy. We would only feel forgiven, and only feel that justice had been done, if someone were punished. So God died not so we could avoid massive direct punishment, but so we could avoid the punishmnet of feeling that we had done injustice.

Part of this is that we humans think justice has been done if someone is punished even if it is not the culprit who is punished, so long as it is someone who is punished on behalf of the culprit (and not, say, accidentally). If George Junior is to jailed for murder, and George Senior offers to take his place, I think people are satisfied to let him do so.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Selective Prosecution. The Taipei Times article "Ma found not guilty in corruption trial" tells of how the KMT government in Taiwan prosecuted opposition party leader Ma for keeping for personal use much of a "special allowance" as mayor of Taipei. It seems that it has been customary for years for officials to treat the allowance as income, and Ma made no secret of doing so, in which case this seems a good example of selective prosecution for political purposes.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Image Captions in HTML."Image captions on Web pages" is good. It said "Sadly enough, there is no markup for image captions in HTML. What comes closest to semantically associating some text content with some image is putting them into a table so that the image is in one cell and the text is either in another cell or in a caption element." Here's an example (try VIEW SOURCE for the code):

I've set up this blog for myself, as a commonplace book, with the idea that it might
also be useful for outside readers. That is why the topics are idiosyncratic. I see that most of my readers are directed here
by Google searching rather than being regular readers.

I will delete rude comments, and will give less leeway to anonymous comments than to signed ones. I will for now at least
allow stupid and ill-informed comments, though other readers don't enjoy them unless they are so ignorant as to be funny.

I will revise my posts freely, usually without any note that they've been revised. If I make an important mistake in a post that I think
people might refer to, I will note the mistake and correction. But I'm not trying to make this a historical record. In fact, I'd like to merge posts on the same topic
and delete posts not of interest a year later, except that I never get round to doing that.